Under the current law, film and music providers can monitor illegal activity on peer-to-peer networks and collate IP addresses of those who infringe copyright. They can then apply to a court to force an ISP to hand over the name and billing address of the person alleged to have downloaded illegal content.

But there have been several cases where people were wrongly accused of illegally downloading copyrighted material.

A similar principle is hoped to be applied in the UK, with the ISPs in court hoping to clear up the definitions of the act, arguing that an IP address does not identify the particular user but only the location of where the alleged infringement occurred.